Joerg S., a member of the Golden Rosycross, shares with Klaus Bielau (LOGON) a life-altering experience that tested his courage in the face of adversity. A craftsman by trade, a trained locksmith who found joy in working with his hands, welding and tinkering, Joerg’s life took a drastic turn when he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident at the age of 22. He remained in an induced coma for three weeks with severe internal injuries. Still, he survived and woke up with his left arm completely paralysed …
KB: Joerg, how did you get into motorcycling?
JS: My passion for mopeds began in childhood. When I was twelve, my father brought me an old NSU Quickly from the scrap yard. I restored it with my child-like skills and great joy and got it ready to ride, then rode it around the block in the evenings. That wasn’t allowed for a twelve-year-old, but in Gelsenkirchen, in the Ruhr district, it was possible. Then, I rode several mopeds and motorcycles, and when I was twenty, I bought the Kawa[1].
KB: And that’s when the accident happened?
JS: We played pool at the Freeway Rider’s clubhouse and set off for home with a group of seven or eight friends at around 10 p.m. We drove through built-up areas at about 100 km/h on narrow roads, over cobblestones and railway tracks. We kept riding very close to each other, changing positions and engaging in friendly, light-hearted battles. Then I – probably trying to avoid someone, as I was told afterwards, I have no memory of it – crashed into a parked car.
KB: And at the hospital, the doctors put you in a coma for three weeks.
JS: There are some memories from that time. I’m lying in intensive care, in a coma that was to last almost three weeks. I remember: There is no light, no tunnel from which warmth and love could flow towards me. Inside me, it is dark and cold; it is raining, and I am terrified of dying. I feel and know I am in great danger, and shapes appear again and again, chasing me. They use every means possible to ensure that I would never leave this place. Among others, there are supposed ‘doctors’ and ‘therapists’ who talk to me kindly but whose transparent intention is to keep me in this place permanently with drugs and other means. And there are old friends from the biker club who now see me as a traitor and shoot at me. The key moment of this coma period occurred in a forest: I am sitting in a construction trailer in a clearing looking through the window at a rising slope with trees, behind each of which hides a dark figure. Some figures howl like wolves and shoot pistols into the air and at the construction trailer, while others just stare in my direction with cold expressions. Overall, they are very aggressive but also arrogant and self-assured. Looking around in the trailer, I see a shelf behind me with modern automatic rifles. Fully aware that I could shoot any figures with these weapons, I looked up the slope and considered my options clearly and calmly. At that moment, the construction trailer door opens, and a voice that touches me deeply says, ‘Joerg, you can just get out of this situation!’ I followed the voice, and as I walked through the trailer door, I woke up from my coma.
KB: In a biker magazine article about you (as one of the very few one-armed motorcyclists), it says that you had bought the fastest motorcycle at the time and had to borrow money from your grandmother. What was it like to ride this ‘hot iron’?
JS: That was back in 1984. It had the Kawasaki, giving me a feeling of freedom, strength, power – and, perhaps paradoxically, a strong sense of control. I rode that motorcycle for two years. Then came the accident. And a very tough year followed. My old life was completely shattered; there was no going back, and building a new life from the remaining fragments was impossible. However, an essential prerequisite for my later new start was also formed during this time. My head and my thinking were completely disorganised. In everyday normal life, almost all actions are mostly unconsciously guided by two-armed movement patterns. I kept coming up against a wall and had to perceive and consider the current situation before every action and then carry out what needed to be done in a new way. This meant I was constantly focused on the present, on the present moment. At the same time, I withdrew more and more from social life and broke off all old contacts, initially even with my parents. My friends, old acquaintances, even my parents and my girlfriend, everybody wanted me to return to the way I was before. They wanted their former normal situation and security back, and it seemed that I was the only one who knew this was no longer possible. At that time, I didn’t have the courage to start something completely new, nor was I physically capable of doing so. I just knew I had to get away. At first, I went to another city to ‘practice’ in a new environment, doing daily shopping, buying toothpaste, shaving stuff and so on … I just wanted to start a new life.
At the end of that year, I was completely down and so lonely that it hurt physically. During this time, I began to read the Bible, from which I absorbed the stories of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness, the Revelation of John, the letters of Paul and the Gospel of John like a sponge. I also read Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, which was a key novel for me. Figuratively and physically, I became one with the story’s protagonists as I had never experienced before or since. This showed me the many sides of a person, and that I don’t have to hinder myself due to my handicap. Physically, I might be “half the man I used to be”, but I realized that there is so much potential for a different, new life. The stories in the Bible raised me to a steadily growing joy and an almost unbearable longing.
This unprecedented longing created pure openness, and it also meant that I absolutely did not want to and could not believe that the events described in the writings were supposed to have happened at some point and then never again … And the burning question arose within me: ‘Where are such people today?’ A short time later, I stood in front of the door of a Rosicrucian centre in Essen. It was the day a new introductory course began – and a completely new life for me. That was around 1988/89, already two years after the accident. In Essen, the Rosicrucian centre had become too small, and the group had found new premises of an area of 700 square metres. But the place needed to be completely renovated. I was there for at least two and a half years, almost daily from morning to evening, and could work without any stress or pressure. I could really try things out with one arm; they let me weld, lay tiles, build walls, drill; no one said, do it faster or do it differently, or that’s wrong.
That’s when I gained confidence in myself, and accepted my situation. The site managers and an old architect who built the podium and did a lot of bricklaying said, ‘Joerg, you still have something to do, you still have something to learn.’ They brought me books on mechanical engineering, mathematics and so on – and that’s when I started learning. I didn’t have a secondary school leaving certificate at the time. Eventually, I was able to study mechanical engineering and to graduate. I read all the Rosicrucian literature and also that of Jiddu Krishnamurti, Rudolf Steiner and other authors who strived for spiritual enlightenment.
I understood that my experiences during the coma resembled Rudolf Steiner’s descriptions of the Kamaloka [1] and those in the Bible about purgatory. I realised that it was essentially my own inner world that had confronted me from outside while I was in the coma.
The painful journey to zero point now made sense; it was like a catharsis. All that what happened melted into meaning and became the basis for a new life, my new life. And I realised something fascinatingly new for me: nature wants to balance everything. If something fails, something else forms so that everything can develop as well as possible.
KB: At the beginning, we talked about excessive confidence …
JS: As a child, but especially during puberty, there was something inside me that always wanted to go beyond the boundaries set by my environment; higher, ever higher, ever greater, something was pushing me. Of course, I couldn’t say what it was at the time. I just always wanted to become better and better. This urge, that I could achieve more, constantly drove me; somehow it lived inside me because I had no confidence in myself at the time, and I couldn’t see any tangible goal within myself that I could develop.
KB: And did you find real courage?
JS: Yes, that courage came after I had reached my zero point. But it was no longer directed outwards, no longer towards building something externally or anything like that, but it turned inwards. Comparing myself to others and having to prove myself to others was no longer necessary. And that’s when a much deeper respect for people awakened. Perhaps you could call it humility – in this there is also a kind of courage.
KB: So, you could say that everything was new because of the accident, that the time after the accident was actually like being born again?
JS: Looking back, it seems to me as if I was lying under a heavy cloud before the accident. Through this event and in the years that followed, this cloud gradually faded as if moving further and further away. Of course, I eventually got back in touch with my parents, who were filled with love and responsibility for me. I also tried to re-establish contacts with one or two of my former friends, but they didn’t understand what I was doing now, what interested me, what the new aspects of my life actually were.
KB: What was or is now your basic attitude of life? Do you have a message for the readers of LOGON?
JS: Approach life with a clear YES to all things; follow what urges you in your heart, even accept the darker side of things, nothing but a YES; perhaps that also has something to do with courage: trying to understand events, both internal and external, as much as possible, and then moving forward step by step – on your path, on the path of your potential. And by the way, I am riding a converted Triumph Bonneville 900 for the last eight years. No quibbling, no ifs or buts.
[1] Kamaloka (Sanskrit) literally: place of desire) is referred to in Christian terminology as purgatory (Latin: purgatorium) and is closely associated with the particular judgment, to which humans are subjected immediately after death.
[1] Kawa: short form for the motocysle brand Kawasaki
